Surgical needles and sutures are typically packaged in single-use, disposable packages. The packages may consist of conventional packages such as foil packets, plastic trays, and paper folder packages. The sizes and types of packages used will vary in accordance with the particular sizes and types of surgical needles and sutures.
Commonly assigned, co-pending U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 901,356 filed on Jun. 19, 1992 discloses a multi-strand suture package and cover latching element. The package includes a tray, a cover, a peripheral channel for sutures and an array of resilient cantilevered fingers to prevent sutures from lifting up out of the channel.
There are numerous types and sizes of surgical needles and sutures. Sutures may, for example, be single-armed wherein a single surgical needle has a single suture attached to it. Or, the sutures may be doubled-armed wherein each suture has a surgical needle mounted to both of its ends. It is also known to use sutures which are not armed with a needle. Conventional sutures may be monofilament or braided, and, either absorbable or nonabsorbable. In addition, conventional surgical needles may be curved or straight and may have taper points, cutting points or blunt points.
It is known that different types of needles and sutures are used for suturing different types of tissue within the body. In any given surgical procedure, numerous types and sizes of surgical needles and sutures will be utilized. The sizes and types of needles and sutures used during each stage of the procedure will depend upon the type and nature of the tissue which the surgeon is suturing, e.g., muscle, cutaneous, blood vessels, bone or organs.
Since the quantities, sizes and types of needles and sutures used for particular surgical procedures are well known, it is common for manufacturers to package procedure kits for particular surgical procedures, e.g., cardiovascular, gynecological, urological, etc. These kits typically consist of all of the sutures and needles needed for a particular surgical procedure individually packaged and arranged in a blister pack tray. The needles and sutures are typically individually packaged. When dealing with such a kit in the operating room, the scrub nurse must open each and every needle packet in such a kit and then dispose of the individual packaging as well as the kit packaging. Not only is this a time consuming job, since a kit may contain hundreds of needles and sutures, but it results in the generation of substantial amounts of waste packaging material that must be disposed of.
There is a need in this art for a package for a surgical procedure kit wherein various types and sizes of surgical needles and sutures can be collectively packaged within a single package. This would allow a scrub nurse to open up a single package rather than having to open up multiple, individual suture packages. Such a package would eliminate excess packaging material and also eliminate the need to dispose of such excess packaging material. Certain surgical procedures may require several packages containing subkits due to the quantity of needles and sutures needed, however this would still provide a major advantage in terms of eliminating the opening of numerous individual suture packages.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a package for a surgical procedure kit wherein the kit contains surgical needles and sutures.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a package for a surgical needle and suture procedure kit which would allow the packaging of various types and sizes of needles and sutures in one single package, including single-armed and double armed sutures.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a package for a procedure kit having minimal packaging materials.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a package for a procedure kit wherein all of the sutures and needles contained in the kit are accessible by opening either a single package or several subkit packages.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a surgical procedure kit comprising a plurality of surgical needles and sutures packaged in a single package.